Guild Wars 2

Everywhere I look rangers are getting knocked on for being/wanting to play an archer.
Is it really that bad for anything outside of pve content? Wvw, soloing, map completion I feel are where it shines.. is there any way to polish this kitten to make it viable?

Even in WvW LB is very iffy.
The problem with a build made around LB is that it doesn’t offer good group utilities and in some situations makes you not get the utilities your party provide, making you less efficient than the other classes.

The current stack meta makes range builds not work well in dungeons and WvW zerg fights, and ranger end in 2 bad spots in those scenarios, if you stay in the stack your LB damage won’t be good and since you’ll usually be a glasscannon you’ll die easily, if you stay at range you’ll cause more damage, but will lose the buffs you could get from the group/party and lose potential damage.

Most of those problems disappear with melee builds, but then you won’t be an archer.

Many topics and suggestions was made to polish the LB, it is a matter of wait and see now.

the problem isn’t necessarily that it’s bad (excusing pve content because I rarely do pve), but that it’s not the best, and there are a lot of tryhards looking to minmax.

at least that’s what I’ve felt, being someone who has played a lb since I started

Point Blank Shot has made archers more enemies than Scarlet did attacking LA.

To make it short:
No, there is no way to polish this kitten to make it truly viable. For any game mode at all

Archery builds are “selfish” in that in order to make them work you have to sacrifice just about all forms of group support.

They are basically the “Magic Find” gear set of the profession specs.

I don’t think archer builds are “selfish”.
Be glad that someone kills your enemies and rescues when you’re downed.
We’re not supposed to support each other all time with buffs anyway…

RoyalPredator.9163:

I don’t think archer builds are “selfish”.
Be glad that someone kills your enemies and rescues when you’re downed.
We’re not supposed to support each other all time with buffs anyway…

Pretty much this. Could say that some viable DPS builds don’t always support allies with effects, but might have few finishers ready to execute combos.

Shotzo.6209:

Is it really that bad for anything outside of pve content?

It’s bad for PvE too unless you “charge it up” with Might/Ferocity gimmicks first and then swap back to it. Either way, you’re going to be doing a LOT of repetitive weapon swapping if you don’t want to be a low DPS leecher.

You can shortbow all day in PvP and WvW.

LB is just a terrible weapon. Combine that with a whole lot of selfish utilities that don’t even help us compete with “top tier” damage in ANY game mode, and it makes teams in all content not want to run rangers.

But yeah, PvP and WvW if you go shortbow and you’re actually playing a sensible build, like, a build that makes sense and isn’t just a hodge podge of random traits and utilities, you’ll be fine.

LB on the other hand has so many skill and design problems that the only reason to ever actually use it is if you like it. That’s a matter of opinion and not efficiency though.

But to clarify what’s wrong with LB:

• None of the skills are conducive to the pet mechanic. Every other weaponset we have has skills that play off of the pets weaknesses, meaning that they have CCs and skills that boost the pets output. LB gives the pet a single swiftness, which is gone by the time it gets to 1000+ range at the longbows most efficient range, and then the pet can no longer function efficiently and will be kited for days.
• Rapid Fire is horrendous damage per time investment on the cast time. It’s poor damage, poor scaling, and just overall, an awful skill. I know it’s a terrible comparison, but play warrior for a millisecond long enough to use Volley, or even pick up a frost bow, and proceed to hate Rapid Fire forever.
• LB 3 is an unreliable stealth that doesn’t even stealth the pet. It’s essentially a placeholder that was a band fix to the longbows still ongoing predicament of not having any sort of defensive options.
• LB 4 is decent enough, but makes other players hate you if you use it liberally, and doesn’t really fit with the rest of the weapon skills since it doesn’t really help create any situation to increase your damage output and is really just a poor excuse for a defense option at the end of the day.
• LB 5, perhaps the best and the worst skill on the weaponset, it is well designed, but hard to use during active combat, and will get you killed by retaliation, and could probably stand to hit harder (again, pick up a frost bow, use it’s barrage, then hate ours forever)
• LB 1 ends up feeling more like it’s penalizing you at closer ranges than giving you a bonus at longer ranges. The lowest range needs to be dropped entirely, and the middle and highest range damage could be increased ever so slightly, unless all of the other changes that need to happen get implemented, in which case, its only an autoattack and doesn’t need to be so strong if the skills are actually worthwhile.

The worst part is, that’s like, the short list of what’s wrong.

I feel that if the devs want to commit to the somewhat controversial balance philosophy from the Ready Up, they need to get their sheep together.

jcbroe.4329:

You can shortbow all day in PvP and WvW.

I do, my favorite weapon, its not like being killed by a ranger is bad enough but rainbow pony paws :o

i wish they would update the long bow, i want to use my kudzu more.